Abstract
BackgroundTapinoma Foerster belongs to the ant subfamily Dolichoderinae and the vast majority of its species are arboreal or generalised foragers. The genus is composed of 70 described species, 22 known subspecies and six valid fossil species worldwide, while from the Arabian Peninsula, three species have been recorded so far.New informationAnts of the genus Tapinoma of the Arabian Peninsula are reviewed, keyed and illustrated, based on the worker caste. Three species are diagnosed, T. melanocephalum (Fabricius, 1793), T. simrothi Krausse, 1911 and T. wilsoni Sharaf & Aldawood, 2012. We present the first illustrated key to the Arabian Tapinoma, enhanced by automontage images to facilitate species recognition. New distributional data for species are presented, based on recently-collected material from the region and literature records. Information on habitats' preference and biology of species are given.
Highlights
The Arabian Peninsula, in western Asia, covers a surface area of 3.2 million km2 comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen (Fig. 1)
457 specimens were collected from countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Suppl. material 1) using different collecting techniques including hand picking (HP), Light trap (LT), Malaise trap (MT), pitfall trap (PT), sifting tray (SF), sweeping net (SW) and Yellow Pan trap (YPT)
The species names follow the online catalogue of ants of the world (Bolton 2021)
Summary
The Arabian Peninsula, in western Asia, covers a surface area of 3.2 million km comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen (Fig. 1). Several faunistic contributions have shed light on zoogeography of the Arabian ants, indicating the predominance of Afrotropical species in the south-western mountains of the Arabian Peninsula and extending southwards to Yemen and eastwards to the Dhofar Province of Oman. Ants of the genus Tapinoma of the Arabian Peninsula are reviewed, keyed and illustrated, based on the worker caste. New distributional data for species are presented, based on recentlycollected material from the region and literature records. Information on habitats' preference and biology of species are given
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